O-Ae
O-Ae was the first course served at a dinner on Awaji Island (see story.) Its name is hard to translate, with a close meaning being something like the “Honorable Meeting of Things.” It’s a type of aemono (和え物), a cold savory dish. One that combines any number of a wide variety of foods with a paste to create a dish that has a new, distinctly different flavor than the ingredients it brings together.
The main foods are fresh vegetables, seafoods, meats; pretty much any type of food you’d like to use. They can be raw or cooked. The paste, which is uncooked, is traditionally made by using a mortar and pestle to pound and grind umami- and protein-rich seeds, nuts, and beans together, with their natural oils helping to create a smooth texture. The paste is seasoned with sugar, salt, and acid as needed and desired. It can be served separately (in which case one can call an aemono a “dip” or “spread”) or blended in with the main foods.
At the dinner that night, the guests made the paste themselves. In addition to seeds and beans (in the form of miso, which is made from soy beans), the paste included a variety of fresh greens and edible flowers. It also included fromage fraîche as a nod to the inspired new ways in which aemono are now being prepared.
Making the paste was a fundamental and exciting lesson in the art of cooking: cooking without a recipe and experimenting with flavors to create something new, interesting, and delicious. Below are the ingredients used for the paste and the foods it was paired with. But also use this recipe as a guide and also as “food for thought” regarding all the creative possibilities of this dish.
O-Ae
おあえ
Serves 4
The Paste
Greens: Amaranthus, Arugula, Basil, Carrot Greens, Chicory, Chinese Taasai, Daikon Radish Greens, Fennel, Italian Parsley, Kaiware Radish Sprouts, Mizuna (Mustard Greens), Oka-Wakame (also called Oka-Hijjiki or Land Seaweed), Red Mustard Greens, Russian Kale, Sarashina (Japanese Bugbane Leaves), Selvatica Wild Arugula, and Tsuru-Murasaki (Malabar Spinach)
Flowers: Edible Marigold, Nadeshiko Carnation, Shiso Buds, Verbena, and Viola
Seeds: Black Sesame Seeds and Rape Seeds, 4 teaspoons each
White Miso, 4 tablespoons
Fromage Fraîche, 4 tablespoons
Directions
Choose from among and as many of the greens and flowers as you’d like and pound and grind them together in a mortar with the seeds, white miso, and fromage fraîche. White miso is both sweet and salty. The fromage fraîche provides a touch of tart acidity. No other seasonings are needed. You can make the paste as smooth or as chunky as you like.
The Paste
The Main Foods
Mini-Tomatoes, Shishito Peppers, Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes, Lotus Root, and Salad Greens
Mozzarella, Camembert, and Black Soybean Mortadella
Shirasu Baby Anchovies
Tiny Blini-Like Pancakes Made from Rice Flour And Grated Red, White, & Green Radishes
Directions
Either serve the vegetables and fish raw or blanch, par-boil, or grill them, as desired.
Serve
Arrange the main foods on a serving platter or in a Japanese ju-bako picnic box like the one pictured below and serve the paste in a bowl alongside it to be used as a dip or spread.
The Main Foods
Ju-Bako Picnic Box
A ju-bako is a set of boxes with as many as five or more layers, with a lid on the top layer. It’s used to store and then conveniently and elegantly serve food and was designed for food on-the-go, such as cherry-blossoming viewing picnics, hunting parties, and cha-kaiseki tea ceremony meals enjoyed outdoors. Nowadays it’s also used at New Year’s when foods are prepared in advance and then nibbled on during the first three days of the new year.
Made from wood, lacquer ware, or synthetic resin, the most common shape is square, but there are also circular, hexagonal, and octagonal ones. The ju-bako we used at the dinner on the beach at Awaji Island are fairly unique in that they are hand-built ceramics made by local potter Masaaki Nishimura at his studio Rakutogama. He used the island’s famous clay to make the boxes and local volcanic ash, rice straw ash from organically grown rice, and natural wood ash for the glaze. To make it a completely all-purpose picnic box, he corrugated the back of the lid so that it can be used as a mortar for making pastes, sauces, and condiments.